I just put a GFS Fat PAF in my Mexi HSS strat today. Used wiring from another guy that bypasses the tone stack. I am impressed with the quality though I may have to rewire as I'd like to soften the high end a bit from the guitar. But overall, the GFS is quite good. I also put a custom unwound Burstbucker 3 in my PRS SE custom, for over a cnote more. The GFS has a little more definition but doesn't come close to the compression and harmonic content of the BB. And the BB is harder to control.

I have two SGs, one with SD Phat Cats and one with a SD JB in the bridge. The JB is probably my least favorite.

I'm a Les Paul guy. I have three of them. They are stock. I have a 60 reissue, a studio deluxe, and a standard. The studio is, eh, not the best. The 60 reissue has warmth and depth and is almost 3D. It has made more than one engineer tear up. But the standard just rocks. Compression, bite, detail, etc. A 490 and a 498. Hard to beat.

To date, I have only swapped pickups on one guitar, and it was because the guitar was a luthier's prototype that shipped with "whatever was in them". Well, "whatever was in them" died, so I replaced them with Lace Alumitones. Those babies are CLEAN!

I am, however, going to swap out the pickups in my old Dean EVO Special Select. The only reason I don't play it more often than I do is that its pickups have been outclassed by later additions to the collection. The rest of the guitar is aces.

So I'm getting a custom-wound humbucker and a custom-wound P90 from Vintage Vibe to replace the EVO's stock humbuckers. The new pickups will be very differently voiced from what they're replacing: where the Deans were (surprise) hot and voiced for rock/metal, the new ones are much cleaner, and should take the guitar more into jazz tone territory.

I bought the GFS on a whim because it was so inexpensive. I'm pleased with it. I had a SD Phat Cat (humbucker size P90) in my HSS strat but was never really pleased with it. A strat really isn't meant to sound like an old P90 SG. Just too much edge and too brittle sounding.

What I meant to say above is the Burstbucker in my PRS is unpotted.

The LP 1960 reissue has ceramic 496 & 498.

The most interesting pups I have are the originals on a 1967 Teisco Del Rey. Honky, somewhat thin, and very microphonic.

My American Special Strat has a Duncan Custom in the bridge and is soon getting new middle and neck PUs as well.

My Epiphone LP Prophecy came with EMGs stock and I don't know if I want to change it, actually the whole point of it was getting an EMG-loaded metal-axe.

And I put the Fender Atomic HB from my HSS Strat into my Epiphone SG Special.
Although the Atomic is far from being my favourite pickup, with 500K pots it's more usable sounding and still a nice upgrade from the stock Epiphone pickups.

EDIT: BTW I know there is a PU-thread on the GB&C forum, but it would be great to have a better one with a good overview and good reviews of pickups.

I had the guys over yesterday to jam and to try out the strat at full bass/drums/guitar volume. Spanky tone, like a strat should be, but they do lack in detail and sound a bit thin and tinny. I switched to my FSR MIM tele, which I use for alternate tunings (we were doing Beck's Loser). I went back to the strat for a bit, but in the end I went back to Les Paul standard. Way more thick and rich in tone.

My main rig is a Carvin V3M into a 2x12 Marshall 1966a cab, so I know it wasn't the amp that was thin. Still, for the dollars, the GFS pups are pretty damned impressive. I'm ordering an ash body in natural finish for the strat. Its an early 2000s MIM HSS strat. I painted it last summer.

This may prompt another OMG post but I took the SD Fatcats out of my Epi SG yesterday and put the original Epi's back in, a HOTCH(G) and G400 N. However, I took the covers off and scrapped off a lot of the wax. Not too bad really. I am a HB guy. Never really got on with P90s except on this, maybe 61 SG, owned by the studio I was recording in.

Well, at it again with the SG. Pulled out the stock pups that I de-waxed and pried the covers off of, and replaced them with a Duncan 59n and a JB in the bridge. Also replaced the toggle. I have to admit that it sounds way, way, way better. I had read some forums talking about how the 59n is too dark and too mid-rangy for a mahogany SG. Indeed, it does accentuate the midrange, almost to the point of appearing louder than the JB in the bridge, which is a higher output pup. So far, rolling off the tone pots a bit even things out, and the 59 cleans up real well when you roll off the volume. The JB has bite and snarl for days. It still doesn't quite compete with my 60 reissue LP, but get's quite a bit closer. Much more multidimensional than it was with the stock epi pups.

Oh, anyone interested in picking up some SD Phat Cats? I have two bridge and one neck available. After playing electric guitar for almost half a century, recording thousands of hours, playing hundreds of guitars and amps, I have learned a couple things. I do not like P90s (except for one vintage SG, 1960 I think). I am a Gibson guy over Fender (sold my Tele last spring but still have my modded strat). I prefer tube amps with cascading preamp gain structure, post Mesa Boogie era (though I had a 51 National that was blistering when cranked wide open, and Ultrasound Rehearsals in NYC had a kickass blackface Twin modded with a master volume, then there was the 100w Marshall 4-input jumpered head into two 4x12s in another studio that ruled, but it was WAY TOO LOUD when cranked enough to really sing).

My bread and butter is a 2HB guitar, preferably PAF type, with a good tube amp with cascading preamps that goes from clean to almost nu-metal territory. As a teenager in the 70s, I still look for that AC/DC meets Aerosmith tone.